Geometry Smoothing from Maya to 3ds Max

phixel

Hi,I was wondering if anyone has a solution or knows of a plugin that might help with this issue I am having.

I know geometry smoothing is handled differently between Maya & 3ds max. (Maya assigns edge weight to affect smoothing between faces, while in 3ds Max smoothing groups are used).

The problem is, when loading a model that was created in Maya into 3ds Max the smoothing appears ok at first, but breaks completely once any sort of edit poly modifier is used. Having to redo smoothing all over again in 3ds Max at this point is tedious and a big waste of time. Is there an option/plugin for either Maya or 3ds Max that can convert Maya edge-weighted smoothing to be editable in 3ds Max? Or maybe some sort of script for 3ds Max that can assign proper smoothing by reading the face normals from the imported Maya geometry?

Thanks

musashidan

Try putting a Poly select mod on first and then the Edit poly mod>collapse the stack. It's ridiculous smoohing between Maya/Max still hasn't been fixed considering they are both Adesk flagship products with a 'send to.....' button feature between the 2. I often get .fbx files from Maya and the normals are completely locked. I have to clear the normals using an Edit normals mod.

Also, on a sidenote, Max also has a hard/soft edge workflow like Maya if you don't like the smoothing groups method. It's in Edge sub-object mode>edit edges>edge properties. There is also a checkbow to display hard edges.

Swordslayer

How are you importing the models? If you use fbx, you have a choice to import the smoothing as smoothing groups which is most probably what you want. If you leave that unchecked, it will import is as explicit normals which are not supported by some modifiers (like Edit poly which clears them).

phixel

Thanks for your input guys, I will explore these options.

@musashidan Yeah thanks, I am familiar with the hard/soft edges option in Max, but for my purposes Max smoothing groups are preferable.
@Swordslayer The models are created in Maya by an outsourced artist and saved into .max format on their end before submission. Using .fbx format instead with the correct export/import settings might be the best solution.

Cheers

musashidan

@phixel smoothing groups are one of the main reasons why I'll never leave Max I can't stand working with hard/soft edges.

phixel

Agreed, when I first started learning 3d it was in Maya, after getting my first job I switched to Max and never went back.

kio

I once hacked a script which recreate ls smoothing groups from explicit normals. Beware the results are a bit nasty..

Check this thread:

https://polycount.com/discussion/comment/2514219

Not sure where the love for smoothing groups comes from, I feel it's a very clumsy solution in comparison to an edge based workflow like in Maya or blender.

Justo

kio said:

Not sure where the love for smoothing groups comes from, I feel it's a very clumsy solution in comparison to an edge based workflow like in Maya or blender.

I feel like that will vary a lot depending on the situation. Sometimes I find myself thinking a certain operation would be a lot easier if I just hardened an edge selection, whereas some other times making a face selection would be preferable.

Swordslayer

Justo said:

kio said:

Not sure where the love for smoothing groups comes from, I feel it's a very clumsy solution in comparison to an edge based workflow like in Maya or blender.

I feel like that will vary a lot depending on the situation. Sometimes I find myself thinking a certain operation would be a lot easier if I just hardened an edge selection, whereas some other times making a face selection would be preferable.

And you can use both approaches in max anyway... Unless you're stuck on some old version.

oglu

The easiest way is to use the uv borders to store the hard edges. There are scripts for maya and max to create hard edges from uvsborders. 

poopipe

Which is fine unless you want hard edges in different places from the uv borders. 

I like smoothing groups because they're stored explicitly and you can select by them. 

musashidan

kio said:

Not sure where the love for smoothing groups comes from, I feel it's a very clumsy solution in comparison to an edge based workflow like in Maya or blender.

Several reasons:

I don't think in terms of hard/soft edges, I think in terms of surfaces - continuous smooth surfaces and surfaces that are separated by an angle break. For me, at least, this make more sense and is more intuitive than hard/soft edges.

Smoothing groups are way easier to work with. I can select by SG and I use the Polysmoother plugin which gives me visual control over the SGs the same as Zbrushe's Polygroups.

@oglu As for obtaining my SGs from UV islands, this is a limited approach. SGs/UV splits don't always correspond - as @poopipe mentioned - and also my hard-surface workflow relies on SGs so at that stage of modeling there are no UVs to use.

oglu

I agree it does not work in all cases. But in a lot of pipelines the "old" rule a hard edge has to be a uv cut is still valid.